Writing Humor

I was listening to a Brandon Sanderson  video, and he talked for a few minutes about writing humor. (Free recordings of his lectures at BYU about writing scifi are worth the time, no matter what your genre.) In this portion of the lecture, he relayed some types of humor: character humor, and subverting expectations, for instance. Then if you google humor techniques, you’ll find an abundance of rules: don’t be offensive, use exaggeration, list three things and have the third be in the wrong category, use alliteration, use words that begin with certain “funny” letters. And a bunch more stuff. Then there are factors humor should include such as surprise endings. We should use just enough elements, not too many.

Who knew? I thought it just came naturally—or not. But no. There are techniques, rules, formats, categories. I’m afraid to study this stuff because I think it might spoil my natural humor, rather than enhance it. I like the humor that arises naturally from the situation or the character—not techniques and rules. I don’t like all these style guides for humor. They sound like rules for making predictable sitcoms. Please tell me what you think. Have you learned humor from a book or podcast? Or did it just spill out?